In the fifteenth year of the Daliang era, a coup erupts in the palace, wiping out the empress's faction. Second Prince Xiao Jingyan fakes his death to escape. He carries a four-year-old child out of a sea of blood, takes on a false identity, earns a living as a doctor, and raises the child to adulthood.
Eight years later, Xiao Jingyan disappears.
They meet again when Lin Yue, at eighteen, passes the palace examination and places third. Xiao Jingyan is sprawled drunkenly in a brothel, the Prince of Heng rumored to have faked his death and given himself over to wine and song. He gives Lin Yue only a cool, “I don't know you.”
Heartbroken, Lin Yue accepts an imperial marriage to Princess Xiao Mei.
On their wedding night, the princess flees. When the wedding attendant lifts the red veil, the person seated beneath the red candles is the very man who said he didn't know him.
Xiao Jingyan chuckles. “Xiao Yue, will you bow at this wedding or not?”
The wronged consort, the three princes fighting for the throne, and a decade-old case were all pieces in the game he had laid out. But Xiao Jingyan overlooked one thing: the child from all those years ago no longer wanted to be just his younger brother.
The writing is good, but it has dug a lot of holes. I look forward to filling them in the future.